Someone is hurting him. Torturing him. But he isn’t alone. And when I feel his heart break as he watches his friends succumb to the pain, I sense the root of his fear.

Not being able to help the people he cares about is destroying him.

The screams shift like they’re changing frequencies, morphing into another horror.

“Mei!” I call out, tears stinging. I don’t know how many people are lost in the static, but I need to get to her. She needs to know she isn’t alone.

A deep voice cries out, and I feel his terror grow as the darkness swallows him whole. He’s panicking, trapped somewhere beyond my reach. It’s the first time he’s ever felt abandonment. The first time he’s realized he could hurt so much.

The fears clash together, screams spinning like a vortex, and I throw my hands to my ears like I’m trying to block out the wind.

There’s so much suffering.

And then something closes around my shoulders, and I hear a voice close to my ear. I hear Gil.

“It can’t hurt you!” he shouts above the hissing. “Trust me—take my hand.”

I feel his fingers tangle through mine, and even though I can’t see anything but darkness and flashes of light, I let him lead me through the nightmare.

30

GIL KNEELS IN FRONT OF me, our bodies half-hidden in the tall grass. My shoulders quake, despite my best efforts. Mei’s screams fill my head like water in a cauldron, bubbling up and spilling over the edge until nothing else exists.

Everything about him is frenzied. Even his voice. “What were you thinking? Do you have any idea what could’ve happened if you’d been taken by another court, out of our reach? We could’ve lost everything.”

I barely hear him. It’s as if I’m below water and my senses are dulled. Frantic. The urge to grab on to something takes over, if only to make the world stop spinning. My hands find Gil’s shirt, and I bury my face in his chest, unable to stifle my sobs.

She’s dead. She’s really dead.

Gil stiffens, but he doesn’t pull away. When he eventually speaks, he releases his words like a sigh. “It wasn’t real.”

It takes a moment to gather myself before I meet his eyes, the dark hazel strangely soothing. “I heard my sister. She’s here.”

“No, she’s not,” he says. The muscles in his jaw clench. “Not yet, anyway.”

My mind must finally catch up to my body, because suddenly our close proximity feels thunderous. I release his shirt and lean back, breaking my gaze. “How do you know that? That thing—that monster—it had Mei. I could feel it.”

Someone else was in there too. Someone who was just as scared as me.